Copyright © 2023 Joy Mead
First published 2023 by Wild Goose Publications Suite 9, Fairfield 1048 Govan Road, Glasgow G51 4XS, Scotland the publishing division of the Iona Community.
Scottish Charity No. SC003794. Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243.
ISBN 978-1-80432-280-2
Cover artwork © Steve Raw | www.stephenraw.com
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Joy Mead has asserted her right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Overseas distribution
Australia: Willow Connection Pty Ltd, 1/13 Kell Mather Drive, Lennox Head NSW 2478
New Zealand: Pleroma, Higginson Street, Otane 4170, Central Hawkes Bay
Contents
Silences 9
What can a poem do? 13
Sybil’s poem 16
Possibilities 16
Healing words? 17
Geo poet 19
Christmas story 2019 20
Sharing a story 22
Prisoner 25
From within the dark times 27
Seashore thoughts 30
So much 31
In the absence of the Festival 32
Imagine time … 34
Fearing illness 35
A distanced hug 36
How to fillet a herring in Hertfordshire 37
Queues 39
Wintersong 40
Catch a spark … 41
First morning 43
Lockdown 3 43
Blessings 44 ? 45
A breath of fresh air 46
What if 47
Spring 51
… the little light the moth knows and the fox pauses in …
Silences …
Around the jagged edge of silence: stories, images … waiting without pattern.
** An almost perfect image of silence: beneath the tree empty chairs placed thoughtfully in a circle waiting …
**
He never spoke of the war. She knew a little: thought of sun, fun and maybe a woman left … He loved beautiful Sicily but the Campaign was bloody, and he found no words to let into the silent emptiness of dread. **
Underneath the talking, below the conversation, the unspoken, the dread, the silence.
** On the other side of silence is a sea-washed stone to fit perfectly into my open hands. It is what it is. It holds its question.
** His face a blank page
unreadable …
His silence
unbreakable …
His mind a hidden wonder of gathered thoughts …
The boy whose mind worked differently loved the silences.
Listened … **
As a river flows to its own nothingness so life takes the words and gives back silence.
** My body is silent memory, of a lifetime laughing and weeping.
**
I am old in my being and running out of words. The caged bird of silence carried from childhood still there waiting to be free …
**
Words written in pencil disturb the silence gently.
** The white froth of cow parsley is silence made visible. **
The words out there –somewhere –ask to be drawn in to each quiet moment, to make a fully formed poem, a story to live by, a pause on the edge of silence …
**
It’s life-giving, to know stillness in sacred moments savoured each time as if the first time: the play of light on the surface of water, the hen harrier’s soundless gliding between us and the open sea, the fullness of the seed resting in my hand, the particular quiet when music pauses, the joy in your face as a dipper skims the river, that special, transforming second when a child’s wide-awake gaze is covered in sleep and I watch …
Wordless moments when everything is stilled and held life-long in love.
What can a poem do?
(for Irfan and Rabia – to celebrate their marriage)
My words can’t keep you free from all harm or give you good things. Life’s mistakes and hurts won’t be prevented by a poem’s good wishes.
But words may lift hearts making it possible, maybe, to walk from here changed and challenged. There must always be stories and poetry to create the images we need in our lives: to tell of flowers that bloom in the desert; of birds that sing in a war zone; of people who love and go on loving in the midst of upheaval and hatred.
We are all made of stories, and shaped by language. It is said you lose your soul if you can’t tell your story. In giving our stories we care for one another.
In sharing our stories we preserve our humanity and know ourselves fully alive.
Poetry gives us pause to rejoice in the wonder and lament the sorrows of everyday living, to wander in a garden gathering the flowers of thoughts and good wishes; to nurture and sustain love; to touch the unknowable heart of all our living.
Like the flight of a bird caught in the sunlight then disappearing into the trees, words go free to make for us all a touching place.
Let us, with you, hold the beauty, the love and diversity, harmony and joy,
faith and relationship, blessings and poetry, of this day.
It’s all miracle enough: this creative, loving power within which we live and move and have our being. Carry its light and beauty with you every ordinary day.
Let your life together write the new story and be the poetry of what it is to be human, alive and loving on this good earth.
Sibyl’s poem
This is the story, the one to live by, the dream to die with: curlews call all around, wild flowers colour the path, and those you love walk by your side to the sea where the caress of waves on your wounded body carries you far from our reach, far out into the forever of love and laughter, of thankfulness and serenity, of remembering and resurrection.
Possibilities
There is the myth of creation: the telling that seeks meaning and a reason for being and then there is new life: the breath of spring,
the green shoot, the butterfly wings, the daffodil burst and the baby born.
There is the subversive story: imagination telling it as it is and how it could be without any striving to make sense, not a Truth but a pattern.
Healing words?
(for Anne, with love)
Might we gather good memories, and tell our stories, taking us back to the day we walked the labyrinth with the enthusiasm of small children then paused to smell the hyacinths, or to that basket filled with apples you wanted to get closer to, needing to touch and to smell the beauty of the fruit, or maybe the damp morning orchard with apples sleeping in the grass.
Could other, half-remembered, images reawaken our sense of wonder: the woodbrown glow of conkers before time takes their shine, leaves shimmering in the autumn light, waves rolling timelessly on so many shores, known and imagined, sunflowers that turn each day to follow the sun, the depth of knowing and unknowing in a child’s smile, the delicacy of tiny hands and the beauty of age-worn hands, faces of family, friends and strangers, people extraordinary in their ordinariness, the bird as it soars and sings a song that will never save us but might keep us in touch with the unknowable.
Then might this poem reach beyond the sorrow and the anger to the quiet and reflective heart of love and beauty, life … and hope that is healing.
Geo poet
Don’t you like the idea of a geo-poet –one who can release poems from the rocks that hold our stories, like Sibelius did with music, make the poem take form, the sound hold for a time, and consciousness keep the words.
I met a geo-poet once. He talked of stones, had one in his pocket as did I.
We wondered:
What is rock?
What is stone?
What is pebble?
Thought of the rocks under our feet. He told me a name I forget but he made them sing.
Come closer, I’ll tell you a story. Come, move into the picture, be enchanted by beauty, moved by suffering, surprised by angels and distant stars. Draw near to haloes and holiness, to a straw-filled cradle and a baby’s tiny hands reaching out through suffering and joy, wanting a future.
Come closer with the quiet people, the humble ones who may not inherit the earth and do it less harm than some. (The wise men will come later bringing unsuitable but symbolic gifts, claiming the light, making history) Come with the care-givers, shepherds with lambs, women with stories to share and food for the family.
Come closer, listen and delve deep
into the human source of the song Mary, everywoman, sings to her son and every child whose eyes open at birth on to storied light. Honour littleness and vulnerability.
Come closer, you are needed here to go on telling this subversive story born out of power and oppression, injustice and fear
but bearing witness to all that is good and surprising at the heart of humanity.
Come closer, the story is for you and it keeps on growing. What matters is to wonder, imagine, discern and trust, to let each image tell, pure and unpolluted, a good story.
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